Little Wheel is a surprisingly neat precursor of Machinarium and a short but solid experience in itself.

User Rating: 9 | Little Wheel FLA
The Good: Superb presentation, both sound and graphics wise; charming, believable world.

The Bad: Short. A bit too easy.

After some years of oblivion the point-and-click genre has found a small and warm home in Flash games (and more recently in touch devices as well) and every now and then you may run into some unexpected little gem to represent it through this media. Well, Little Wheel is one of those gems and even though it's on the short/somewhat-easy side it's still solid and engaging enough even to bring new players to the genre.

The game tells the story of a world full of robots that due to an electricity shortage... cease to "live". And you, as a robot "revived" by a lightning bolt, have the chance to set things straight and put everything back to normal by reaching and turning the main power generator on again.

First thing to notice here--and that's the main value of the game--is the superb (not exaggerating) presentation. Graphics are amazingly neat with a very strong sense of atmosphere--the contrast between the shadowy objects and the background, how stuff get blurred when they're "out of focus", the physics regarding weight and inertia, everything sums up to create a believable... living world. Sound wise it's remarkable as well with some great SFX and jazzy music (despite holding only two music pieces; them both really shine and don't get tiring).

Aside that the gameplay (point-and-click puzzles) design may not be exactly impressive but it's charming for sure and still very cohesive with the overall mood of the game. Some screens ("levels") can get a little tricky (including some trial/error cases) later on but nothing that can keep anyone from reaching the end of the game. Talking about it the adventure is a bit on the short side (no more than 10 minutes required to beat it) but this is the case where less is more because that makes easier for the game to leave an impression in the player.

Is hard not to think about Machinarium (an indie from Amanita Design that hit the jackpot) when playing Little Wheel but you'll be surprised (again) to know that this little one was released around 7 months before its famous brother.
Is hard to tell if it has influenced Machinarium or not but even if its historical role can't be properly confirmed Little Wheel is still a great game on its own merits and a must play if you have 10 minutes to spare with an indie game.

- Reviewed for The Autonomous Regime Union